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John Coltrane: Fearless Leader
by Norman Weinstein
John Coltrane Fearless Leader Prestige 2006
This six-CD set of all of the original Prestige albums led by John Coltrane comes as a relief after the previous sixteen-disc box of every one of his preserved recordings on the label, as leader or sideman. Putting aside the daunting cost of that huge collection, there was a fair amount of dross, at least to these ears--the session under Kenny Burrell's name and blowing sessions with Al ...
Continue ReadingA Love Supreme on the Paris Stage
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala's novella “A love supreme" (1982) is the most moving and apposite tribute to the achievement of John Coltrane, in any medium, that I know. The account of a pair of encounters between a young African expatriate in New York and John Coltrane, motivated by the death of the latter in July 1967, exhibits an earnest sincerity toward the era so touching that it might almost be mistaken for parody by readers more accustomed to a jaded ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions
by Doug Collette
The Miles Davis Quintet The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions Prestige Records 2006 (1955-56)
Adorned by a painting rendered by the man with the horn himself, the elegant understatement of the packaging of The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is wholly in line with the music it contains. The four-CD set--the latest chapter in the seemingly endless, but well justified, series of homages to Miles Davis--captures the entire output of Davis' mid ...
Continue ReadingThe House That Trane Built: The Story Of Impulse Records
by Suzanne Lorge
The House That Trane Built: The Story Of Impulse Records Ashley Kahn Hardcover; 340 pages W.W. Norton & Co. Inc. 2006
Author Ashley Kahn's latest contribution to the documentation of jazz history is The House That Trane Built: The Story Of Impulse Records, a chronicle of the rise of Impulse Records in the '60s and '70s. Impulse Records occupied a unique place in the development of jazz for the sheer variety of ...
Continue ReadingThe Miles Davis Quintet: Miles Davis: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions
by C. Michael Bailey
The noted Irish-American author Thomas Cahill has written a series of books called “The Hinges of History" where, instead of concentrating on war, outrage, and catastrophe, the author illuminates stories of grace, great gift-givers and the evolution of our human sensibility. Cahill brings to life those personalities who had the greatest impact on who we are. In the realm of jazz music, we have an artist who regularly installed hinges in the history of American music. He ...
Continue ReadingJohn Coltrane: One Down, One Up: Live at the Half Note
by John Kelman
How times have changed. These days, when a group is to be recorded for broadcast, it's often at the mercy of the people making the recording. Sets have to be altered, sometimes significantly so, in order to package the performance so that it's “broadcast-ready. The process can be so intrusive that artists like guitarist Pat Metheny speak about self-editing when they know they're to be recorded.
Not so in 1965, when two separate performances of saxophonist John Coltrane's classic quartet ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall
by Samuel Chell
I don't recall a jazz CD ever receiving as much pre-release publicity as this one, Newsweek even referring to it as the “musical equivalent of the discovery of a new Mount Everest." Consequently, a listener couldn't be faulted for some anticlimactic sentiments, if not outright disappointment, at having the product in hand. Not to worry. Even upon an initial play, the recording is capable of commanding undivided attention from the first through the last track.
Monk has never ...
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